The Hearts of Dragons (25 page)

“I have to protect her,”
Minawë said. “She’s my mother.”

The light circling Iren
stopped. “She’s your . . .”

“And like you,” Minawë
said, hoping she sounded bolder than she felt, “I’ll fight to protect her. If
you want to kill her, then you’ll have to kill me too.”

Iren eyed her
uncertainly. Minawë thought she’d managed to avoid the coming tragedy.

A pressure touched her
shoulder. She looked to her right. Rondel had a hand on her. “Minawë,” her
mother said, “you’re in the way.”

“What are you saying?”
Minawë screamed. “You can’t mean to go through with this!”

“I have to,” Rondel
replied. “It’s why I came here.”

“What? No, we came to
rescue Iren!”

“Does Iren look like he
needs rescuing? Open your eyes. If Hana or Melwar had wanted to kill him, they
had plenty of chances long before we arrived. No, ever since Balear told us
about Hana bringing Iren here, I’ve known Melwar’s plan. He meant to corrupt
Iren by exposing his past. Even if Iren doesn’t become the Maantec emperor,
Melwar has still turned him from the Holy Dragon Knight he once was into a
demon obsessed with revenge. I knew Melwar would succeed in doing that, and I
knew that because he would succeed, I would have no choice but to fulfill the
Storm Dragon Knight’s duty.”

Minawë’s brow furrowed.
“The Storm Dragon Knight’s duty?”

“Okthora’s Law says that
evil must be annihilated. It’s meant in a broad sense, but it has another
meaning as well. The dragons can only test potential knights at the moment they
first make contact. After that, the knight can change in any way, and the
dragon is powerless to break their bond. Divinion is the Holy Dragon. He
chooses knights based on purity of heart. Once he chooses, though, his knight
can become twisted, as Saito did. When that happens, the Holy Dragon can be
corrupted.”

“Corrupted? How?”

“When a Dragon Knight
uses magic, his will mixes with that of the dragon,” Rondel said. “If the Holy
Dragon Knight is wicked, his will can corrupt Divinion’s. If that process isn’t
stopped, Divinion himself could become evil. The Holy Dragon holds all the good
in the world in balance. If he became corrupted, that balance would break, and
Raa would fall into chaos.”

“That’s why you weren’t
upset when you found out I couldn’t use magic,” Iren interjected. “If I
couldn’t reach Divinion, then I couldn’t corrupt him. I thought you had more
faith in me than that. You told me last year that I didn’t remind you of Iren
Saito anymore.”

“Yes, and look how wrong
I was. You turned out just like him in the end. I didn’t want to believe that
you could. For a while I fooled myself into thinking you could avoid his fate.
In a corner of my mind, though, I knew it was only a matter of time before you
became corrupted. But if you couldn’t use magic, then I would never have to
worry about it. I would never have to fulfill my duty as Storm Dragon Knight.
Now it seems you have your magic back, and that means I have no choice.” Rondel
drew her dagger.

“Then the duty of the
Storm Dragon Knight,” Minawë gasped, “is to kill the Holy Dragon Knight!”

Rondel kept her eyes on
Iren. “Before the Holy Dragon Knight can corrupt Divinion, that person must
die,” she said. “The Storm Dragon Knight bears that responsibility. Evil must
be annihilated, and a new Holy Dragon Knight, one pure of heart, must be
chosen. When that person inevitably becomes corrupt, they must die as well. For
the sake of the world, this cycle must continue.”

Iren raised his
Muryozaki. Minawë’s eyes filled with tears as her mother and best friend
squared off against each other. “Please,” Minawë begged, “please don’t do
this.”

Neither Iren nor Rondel
responded to her. They locked eyes, each waiting for the other to make the
first strike.

“Don’t do this,” Minawë
repeated. When they continued to ignore her, she drew her Forest Dragon Bow.
“In that case, I’ll stop you myself!”

Magic welled within her.
She would summon vines like she had in Aokigahara and ensnare them. Then they
wouldn’t be able to kill each other. They would have to listen to her.

A gray blur flashed by
Minawë’s head. Pain arced across her cheek. She wiped her face, and blood
smeared her hand. Neither Rondel nor Iren had moved, which meant only one
person could have attacked her.

Hana stood not a dozen
feet away. She had kicked off her sandals so that she was barefoot. Three
pebbles, each no larger than Minawë’s fingernail, floated in midair in front of
the Maantec.

Minawë eyed the woman
with loathing. “I thought you were ordered not to interfere.”

“I was,” Hana said, “but
I have a second order. This battle is between Iren and Rondel. No one may get
in their way. I’m here to ensure that.” She smirked. “If you want to stop them,
you’ll have to go through me.”

Against Azar, Minawë had
been terrified. Now she felt only cold fury. All of this was Hana and Melwar’s
fault. She raised her bow. “Fine, bitch,” she said, “let’s go.”

When Veliaf appeared on
the horizon, Balear stopped a moment to stare in disbelief. The landscape had
transformed from what he remembered. A foot of snow blanketed the area around
the village, and its wall had changed from slate gray to a glimmering blue-white.
Looking closer, Balear realized ice had covered it.

He charged forward,
heedless of the cold. The heavy snow slowed his progress to a crawl. Balear
cursed. At this rate the Fubuki would ransack Veliaf and move on before he
could get there.

As he trudged, flickers
of movement by the town gate caught his eye. At first Balear mistook them for
tricks of the windblown snow, but then he realized what they were.

Fubuki. Four of them.

Balear denounced himself
as a fool. Of course there was more than one! Granted, the number was small,
but based on what the Ice Dragon Knight had demonstrated in the summer, four
were more than enough.

The fifteen-foot-tall
Fubuki smashed against Veliaf’s gate with hammers larger than Balear’s body.
Their strength was unreal. Balear doubted Iren or any other Maantec could match
it. Every hammerblow dented the gate.

Balear wracked his brain
for a way to distract them. He didn’t have any ranged weapons and couldn’t have
used them with one arm anyway. Still, he had one tool that might work over a
distance.

“Hey!” he shouted.
“Fubuki! Do you want to fight a Dragon Knight?”

He had no idea if the
Fubuki could hear him over their pounding hammers, but whether by coincidence
or not, one of them looked up. It roared and bounded toward Balear.

Although the snow slowed
Balear, it didn’t affect the Fubuki. The beast plowed through the drifts with
brute force.

Balear raised his
Auryozaki. Memories of his only previous fight with a Fubuki surged through
him. The Ice Dragon Knight had defeated him effortlessly. It hadn’t even used
much magic. If this monster charging him had the same combat skill as the Ice
Dragon Knight, Balear might die before he could meet his previous foe again.

Then the Fubuki was on
him. He leapt to the side as the creature’s hammer smashed into the ground and
flattened the snow into slush. Balear noted the back end of the hammer had no
spear, unlike the Ice Dragon Knight’s weapon.

Using the Auryozaki’s
weightless advantage, Balear swung from an otherwise impossible stance. The
Fubuki raised its hammer, but it was too slow. The Sky Dragon Sword cut off the
monster’s arm at the elbow.

As the blade swung,
Balear felt a strange tugging at his mind. He recalled one of the dreams from
his training. In it he had used magic to launch a cutting arc of wind off his
sword and attack a foe at range. He’d never bothered attempting the move in
real life. He knew he didn’t have magic like Maantecs or Kodamas.

So when the air current
off his sword sliced the Fubuki in half, Balear nearly fell over at the sight
of it.

“I,” he stammered, “I used
magic?”

He didn’t have time to
consider it. The other three Fubuki had seen Balear kill their ally, and now
they charged him together.

Balear set his jaw and
thought back on the dreams from his time in the wild. He’d considered magic
impossible before, but now he felt like he’d used it a hundred times. He
remembered every spell he’d seen in his dreams, and he knew exactly what to do.

One Fubuki was faster
than the others. As the beast approached, Balear swung his sword. The air
current leapt off it and beheaded the monster while it was twenty feet away.

Balear flicked back the
Auryozaki and fired another shot. In his haste for a second kill, though, he
aimed poorly. The attack went low and grazed a Fubuki’s shin, slowing but not
stopping it.

Fortunately, the injury
meant the two beasts arrived separately instead of together. Balear deflected
the first’s hammer off his sword and countered by driving the massive blade up
into the monster’s abdomen.

By the time the Fubuki
with the wounded leg arrived, Balear had freed his sword and felt confident
enough to make the first move. Before the monster could swing its hammer, it
lost both legs. Its head followed a second later.

Balear took a moment to
catch his breath, then pressed on to Veliaf. When he reached the gate, he
banged on it twice with the butt of his sword. “Open up!” he shouted. “It’s
Balear. I’m here to help!”

No response came. What
that meant Balear didn’t know, but he wasn’t getting in the village this way.

Then again, neither were
the Fubuki. If any remained, they must be on the far side of Veliaf attacking
the northern part of the wall.

Balear plodded through
the snow around the town’s perimeter. Veliaf wasn’t large, but it still took
him half an hour to reach the far side. Now that he knew there was more than
one Fubuki, he feared he would come upon an army of them. As a result, when he
reached them, he stopped in surprise.

There were only five of
them. Four stood against Veliaf’s wall and pummeled it with their hammers. The
fifth hung back, and Balear could identify that one by its weapon alone.

The Ice Dragon Knight
raised the spear end of its Ryokaiten, and a layer of ice sprouted on a bare
patch of Veliaf’s wall near his subordinates. The other Fubuki then hammered
the frigid stone. After they’d chipped off the ice, the Dragon Knight cast its
spell again, and the process repeated.

Balear watched in
confusion through three cycles of hammering. The strategy made no sense.
Granted, flecks of stone came off each time a blow landed, but even with four
Fubuki pummeling the wall, they would need hours to breach it. All the while,
the defenders could rain arrows on them.

But then, no arrows were
falling. Balear looked up at the wall and saw why. Atop it stood a dozen human
bodies encased in ice. They had bows in their hands.

A cry went up from the
Ice Dragon Knight. The other Fubuki stopped their attacks and faced their
leader.

The Dragon Knight shifted
to look at Balear. “Sky Dragon Knight!” it called, its voice a gravelly roar,
“I thought you would have flown away by now. Or can’t you do that with only one
wing?”

Balear scowled; he
hadn’t known the Fubuki were capable of speech. He forced himself to stay calm.
“Mock me if you want,” he said, “but your team at the gate is dead. I killed
them.”

“Did you now?” the
Fubuki asked, cocking its head sideways. “A human can’t kill four Fubuki. Here,
I’ll prove it.” It gestured to its allies, and they strode over to Balear.

The Lodian let them
surround him. Then, as the monsters raised their hammers, Balear smiled. He
spun and let magic flow into the Auryozaki. He’d seen this technique in one of
his dreams, one where he’d been caught in the middle of an enemy army. As he
whirled around, wind sliced out from the Auryozaki in a circle. It cut down all
four Fubuki at once.

Balear stopped his
motion and leveled his sword at the Ice Dragon Knight. “Your turn next.”

“You have new tricks
since we last met,” the creature said with a smile that showed its needle-like
teeth. “Good. I hate boring fights. That’s why there were only nine of us. Any
more, and I might as well attack this town while hopping on one leg.”

The Fubuki wanted to
goad him. Balear knew that. If he rushed in, as he and Iren had in the summer,
he would die.

He needed to focus.
Every enemy had a weakness. That was a fundamental rule of battle, one Amroth
had drilled into him in the Castle Guard. He had to find it.

Balear took a step
forward. “You won’t conquer Veliaf,” he said.

“Conquer?” the Fubuki
looked incredulous. “I don’t want to conquer it.”

“What?” Balear asked,
taken aback. “You’re attacking the wall, and your other Fubuki were trying to
get through the gate. What are you doing here if not conquering?”

For a few seconds the
Fubuki considered Balear. Then it threw back its head and laughed. “You thought
those four were supposed to get through the gate? They were just to keep the
humans from running away. I needed them penned up so I could kill them all.”

The color drained from
Balear’s face. “You didn’t come to raid?”

“Fubuki do not raid. We
are servants of the Ice Dragon Yukionna, and she has only one wish: the death
of all things.”

Balear felt cold, colder
than the snowy conditions warranted. No one defended the walls. No one had
answered at the gate. It wasn’t because they were afraid.

It was because they were
already dead.

The one-armed man looked
at Veliaf’s frozen wall and comprehended. “This ice extends all the way through
the village, doesn’t it? The other Fubuki were diversions while you froze
everyone.”

The Ice Dragon Knight
bared its hideous smile again.

Balear clenched the
Auryozaki. He was too late. He’d come to save Veliaf, but there was no one left
to save.

There was one thing,
though, that he could do. He pointed his sword at the Ice Dragon Knight. As he
did, a great wind whipped around him. If he couldn’t protect the people of
Veliaf, at least he could avenge them.